


The Sun Will Shine When Morning Comes

by blarfkey



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Erik POV, Erik sings the lullaby, Fluff with a side of angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Raven and Peter's friendship continues to intrigue me, Sequel fic to Woodstock 83, Sick Fic, dadneto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 08:43:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7260574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blarfkey/pseuds/blarfkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Erik and Peter were a Venn diagram, their circles would not intersect.  Erik thanks God every day for it. Peter has no temper. He has no rage, no tragedy. He is light where Erik is shadow.</p><p>Right now he is moaning piteously on the couch because his medicine has worn off and his headache has returned. </p><p>“I’m dying,” Peter croaks. “Dad, I’m dying. I’m not gonna make it. I’m going to the spirit in the sky.”</p><p>Erik rolls his eyes. There is a certain twisting in his gut, both thrilling and painful every time Peter calls him “dad.” It snags like a hook.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sun Will Shine When Morning Comes

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to Woodstock 83 but not it's not entirely necessary to read that before reading this story. Suffice to say, Peter has already confessed to Erik at this point.

 

 

Erik learns new things about his son every day:

 

  1. Peter is 27.
  2. He has an unhealthy love affair with mass produced junk food. The only thing saving him from a heart attack at fifty is how often he runs.
  3. Which is because he is never _still_. Tapping fingers, cracking knuckles, swinging feet, head bobbing to music, a mouth that never shuts up.
  4. He must constantly be entertained. His Walkman is a constant presence on his hip, inseparable, like a mother and her infant. He changes the television channel with every commercial.



 

All of these facts about Peter converge to make his life absolute misery when he catches a stomach virus. Erik knows something is wrong when Peter doesn’t show up at the breakfast table to slather half a bottle of syrup on his pancakes. He finds Peter in his room, sitting on the edge of his bed and staring at a shirt in his hand that he has yet to put on.

“Peter?” Erik knocks on the open door to gain his son’s attention (his _son_. He has a _son.)._ Peter is never still.

The boy jerks, as if he had been lost in thought, and looks at Erik with glassy eyes.

“I feel weird, man. Like, really, really weird.”

His voice comes like syrup, soft and slow and nothing like the rapid babbling Erik is used to. In two seconds, he crosses the room in long, concerned strides and places his hand on Peter’s forehead, praying that Peter did not overdose on some kind of drug because he got bored.

It’s scorching.

“You have a fever,” Erik tells him. “A high fever. You should get back into bed. I’m getting the thermometer.”

“Noooo way, man. I am not tired,” Peter declares, even as he leans heavily into Erik’s palm.

“Get into bed.”

“There are pancakes downstairs,” Peter whines.

“I’m not asking.” Erik gives Peter the same stare that he uses to shut Sean and Hank up when they got too rambunctious. It’s just as effective on his son.

“Bossy,” Peter mutters, climbing back into the covers.

Erik concentrates for a moment and the thermometer floats in from the bathroom down the hall.

“Open up.”

Peter huffs a sigh, crossing his arms before allowing Erik to insert the thermometer.

 A sharp, jolting pain hits Erik like a kick to the chest.

The petulant frown, the crossed arms, the impatient tapping of fingers and the way Peter’s eyes cross as he tries to gauge his own temperature. He is a mirror image of Nina, who loathed having her temperature checked.

Erik has to take a second to breathe.

“102,” he announces a minute later. It’s higher than what he expected. He fights down a rising panic. Nina had temperatures higher than this, and Peter is a grown man.

His son groans and lays his head back in the pillows. 

“I’m going to get you a glass of water. Don’t move from that bed.”

Of course, if Peter wanted to go for a brisk jog to Manhattan and back in the time that Erik is gone, he would never know. Erik latches on to the metal in the Walkman, stored safely on the night stand, and monitors it instead.

It takes a few minutes of combing through the cabinets to find the glasses. He has no idea where the medicine is stored, since he never takes it.

_Charles, do we have any fever reducer?_

_Not at the moment. I’m afraid last week rather cleared us out_.

Last week several students had come down with fever and aches and a racking cough. Peter had kept them entertained, playing his Walkman for them and dancing, or telling knock knock jokes and keeping up with the endless requests for pillows or fans or water or wastebaskets.  Come to think of it, that’s probably the cause of his predicament today. Not even Peter can outrun an infection.

 _I’ll have Raven pick some up at the store,_ Charles adds.

Erik nods, a habit despite knowing that Charles didn’t see it, and gets Peter his glass of water. The Walkman hasn’t moved, and by the time Erik returns, Peter is snoring and drooling slightly on his pillow.

Something clenches in his chest, as if Peter dug his fingers in past Erik’s ribs and _squeezed_.

Sometimes looking at Peter hurts. He never expected a son, and often it doesn’t feel real to him. Peter is already grown; he doesn’t need Erik and Erik had no part in shaping him. They are father and son in name and genetics only. Erik never soothed his cries or taught him to ride a bike or witnessed the day his powers manifested.

He doesn’t know what they could possibly gain from each other, but he cannot help but be drawn to him.

Quietly he sets the glass of water down and, after a moment’s deliberation, smooths some of Peter’s hair away from his mouth and tucks it behind his ear.

 

 

Raven laughs when Erik tells her of Peter’s condition.

“Serves him right,” she said. “He told me he hadn’t gotten sick in twelve years. Says he _outruns the germs_. Like, are you fucking kidding me?”

A smile twitches Erik’s lips. He should find Peter’s sense of humor immature and irritating. Instead it’s refreshing.

“We are out of pain reliever. I need you to go into town and replenish our stock.”

Raven’s eyebrows raise. “Try that again?”

Erik glares at her and she glares right back. Sometimes he misses the days when she followed him like a lost puppy.

“Can you please,” he says with false calm, “do me the honor of going to the store and picking up some Tylenol so my son doesn’t die of a fever?”

Raven grins and slaps him on the chest. “I would be _honored_. Besides, if he does, who is going to help me fuck with Scott?”

There would probably be a line of volunteers snaking out past the gates for such a privilege. Erik thanks her and goes to find Hank, who is the closest approximation of a medical doctor they have.

“Dr. McCoy,” Erik calls, finding him in the labs beneath the school.

In order to keep some distant cordiality between them, he never calls Hank by his given name. Hank never took to Erik, not when he was a teen mooning over Charles and his two doctorates and Erik had no idea how to talk to anyone without losing the threatening edge to his voice and certainly not when they nearly killed each other in France.

Hank may hate Erik, but the feeling is not mutual. Despite everything, Erik respects Hank, appreciates his pragmatism in creating precautionary measures, and is grateful for Hank’s protectiveness over Raven. He doesn’t begrudge Hank’s resentment because, quite frankly, Erik deserves it. Not everyone is as irrational as Charles and his unfailing optimism.

“Yes, Erik?” Hank sighs.

He sketches out ideas for a new aircraft on trace paper. Erik thinks about offering his help in building it, but he doesn’t know if Hank would allow it.

“Peter has a fever of 102 degrees. I think he caught it from the other students, but I don’t know for sure.”

Hank looks up, glasses sliding down his nose. “I’ll get my stethoscope. Is he in his room?”

Erik nods. “Sleeping. But God only knows for how long, and he doesn’t seem keen on staying in bed.”

A small, hesitant smile plays on Hank’s lips, there and gone so fast that Erik might have imagined it.

“Don’t worry. I will take a look at him.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

 

 

The fever is not serious. Erik already knew this, rationally, and yet he can’t relax until Hank pronounces this officially. It – and the cough that Peter’s acquired – will last two to three days before tapering off, just like it did with the other students.

“So I’m not dying? I can get the fuck out of this bed?”

“Absolutely not,” says Hank. “You need fluids and bed rest, or it’s going to get worse and you will need antibiotics.”

“I can’t stay in bed all day! There’s nothing to _do!_ ”

Hank gives Peter a kind smile and leans in. “Read a book,” he says, and pats Peter’s head before leaving the room.

“He’s been hanging out with Raven too much,” Peter mutters. “She’s corrupted him.”

Erik looks at Hank's retreated back with something akin to pride.

 

 

“Where is that little shit?”

Raven stands in the doorway of the kitchen with a shopping bag in one hand and the other hand clenched in a fist.

“He’s not in his room?” Erik looks up from the soup he is stirring on the stove.

“Oh my God, Erik, did you lose your kid?”

Raven says this jokingly, a smirk twisting her lips, but Erik is paralyzed with the jolt of a panicked memory. He swallows it down and takes a deep breath.

“Dr. McCoy told him to get bed rest. I was making him soup.”

“You expected him to stay put? Have you met your son?”

It surprises Erik how much that stings. He should have known better. Eyes closed, Erik searches for the familiar signature of Peter’s Walkman emanating from . . .

“He’s in the den.”

 

 

Peter has burrowed himself in a nest of blankets on the couch. A soap opera blares on the television on front of him. He pins them both with a challenging glare, his resemblance to a furious baby owl so strong that Erik has to bite his tongue to keep from smiling.

“I’m not reading a fucking book,” he says before either of them can say anything.

Erik raises his hands in surrender. “I would never dare ask that of you.”

Raven nudges knees with her foot. “Budge over, Gonzales.”

She settles in the space that Peter makes for her, and he immediately rests his feet in her lap. Erik expects her to shove them off her, but she settles her arms across them and snaps her fingers for the remote. They paint a comfortable picture, two people who can sit in untroubled company without a past that haunts them.

He leaves Peter in Raven’s capable hands for a few hours while he gets various errands finished and tells himself that the twist in his gut is definitely not jealousy.

 

 

At night the medication wears off and the fever grows worse. Peter shivers on the couch, clutching the knitted throw (from a student’s grandmother) to his chest and yet Erik can feel the heat of his fever through their clothes.

He has endured enough mindless cartoons and sitcoms for one evening anyway.

“Let’s get you to bed.”

Peter nods, no words, no argument. It worries Erik more than the fever. He wraps the blanket around Peter and helps him off the couch. They stumble up the stairs, Peter’s arm around Erik’s shoulder, his body shaking like a leaf in the wind.

Erik piles on the blankets once Peter slips wordlessly into bed, adding the duvet from his own bed on top. Peter’s skin, already pale, has an unhealthy pallor enhanced by the dull sheen of his hair. He gives Peter the next dose of Tylenol and makes him drink nearly the entire glass before the boy flops his head back down on the pillows, eyes closed.

At this point, Erik would sit down on the edge of Nina’s bed and brush her hair back with his fingers, tucking her doll in beside her. He would sing to her, or tell her stories about her becoming Queen of the Animal Kingdom.

Peter doesn’t need dolls or songs or stories and Erik finds himself standing awkwardly by the bed, useless.

“Try to get some sleep,” he says finally. “I’m down the hall if you need anything.”

A flash of movement and Peter’s hand is gripping his arm as hot as a brand.

“Don’t . . . don’t leave.”

Peter’s eyes are fever bright and glassy, and his gaze clings to Erik as steadfastly as his hand.

“What do you need?”

“I don’t  . . . I don’t want to be alone.” He huffs a laugh that turns into a bitter cough. “Sorry. I  . . . sound like a baby, but . . . I’ve never been sick . . . without my mom . . . before.”

Erik sits down on the edge of the bed. “What does she do for you?”

Peter shakes his head. “Nothing that I . . . expect from you.” He takes Erik’s hand and guides it to his burning forehead. “This feels good.”

“Do you want a washcloth?”

The boy shakes his head again. “Too wet.”

Erik sits there, cupping Peter’s forehead and then, after a little while, the back of his neck. The boy’s skin scorches and he must remind himself that the fever is not serious and that it will pass in a day or so. Meanwhile Peter burrows under the blankets until only his head sticks out.

“She sings,” Peter whispers after a little while. “Sometimes. Songs from the . . . radio. You don’t . . . have to sing.”

A hazy smile crosses Peter’s lips at the thought.

Erik finds himself paralyzed, visions of Nina surfacing. Nina, curled up in her bed, smiling as he pushes her bangs aside and kisses her forehead goodnight, that song humming in both their throats. He closes his eyes against the salty sting and forces himself to breathe.

Being around Peter is dangerous. Why did he stay? He’s not ready for this. He should leave, before either one of them gets too attached. Peter deserves a father who is sane and undamaged.

Eventually, his son’s breathing evens out and his eyes have fluttered shut. But Erik sits, rooted to the spot, feeling his son’s forehead warming his hand like a furnace. He should leave, but he will allow himself this one stolen moment.

 Slowly, almost unconsciously, he cards his fingers through Peter’s bangs the way Nina used to find comforting. The song comes out almost too softly to hear, a wordless hum dragged through tired vocal cords. And then the words appear, mid chorus, in their original Yiddish, words his lips have not formed since he sang it with his mother. He sings through to the end of the song and starts over again, voice stronger.

A tight knot in his chest unfurls and it feels like a broken dam sweeping through him. With a shudder, he finishes the song, squeezes Peter’s shoulder, and walks out of the room.

 

 

Charles finds him sitting by the fountain, quietly having a panic attack, face buried in his knees as his chest spasms beneath him. He thought he was over reactions like this.

“Erik?” His old friend’s voice is hesitant in the dark. Erik feels the chair coast to a stop beside him.

A hand, soft and light, lands on his shoulder.

 _Breathe, Erik_.

Charles’ presence settles over his like warm water, and Erik sinks into it the same way he did over twenty years ago, when dreams about his parents would shake the hotel room. Eventually, his breathing settles and the tightness in his chest loosens.

“I can’t stay here,” he whispers.

“You certainly can,” says Charles, but there is no judgment in his voice.

“I’m not ready to be a father again. I’m too broken.”

Despite En Sabbah Nur’s assurances to the contrary. But if Erik was whole, a god among insects, a _system breaker_ , he wouldn’t be fighting tears in the backyard of a school because his adult son wanted a lullaby.

“You’re not.” Charles says sharply. He squeezes Erik’s shoulder almost painfully. “You have a great capacity for love in you, Erik. And I know it feels like the universe does nothing but punish you for it, but I don’t think you should lock that part of yourself away.”

His bald head positively gleams in the moonlight. Even after these weeks, Erik still finds himself taken aback at the sight of it.

“I don’t know if I have it in me to give him what he wants,” Erik sighs.

“Peter is not like Nina. He doesn’t have the same wants. Why don’t you figure those out for yourself before you decide that you can’t handle them?”

Erik flinches a bit. “You think I’m abandoning him.”

Charles leans over the armrest until Erik can’t avoid his gaze anymore. “I think that you cannot bury and ignore your pain. I think that you could find some peace of mind here, if you will allow yourself to feel like you deserve it.”

 

 

By the morning, Peter’s fever has cooled and hovers somewhere around one hundred degrees. Erik knows this because he is the first one to shove the thermometer into Peter’s grouchy mouth right after his breakfast of toast and light jam.

“Just enough to be miserable,” Peter mutters, smacking his head back onto his pillow.

Erik finds himself smiling in the face of Peter’s petulance. “You’re getting better. In another day or two you will be speeding around the house and driving Scott crazy.”

“I don’t want to wait that long,” Peter whines.

“If you draw Scott into false complacency, then your next prank will be even sweeter because he won’t expect it,” Erik points out.

This makes Peter grin, though it’s tired and it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Take your medicine.” Erik slides over the glass of water and the Tylenol.

Peter downs the two pills dutifully and settles back on the pillows.

“So, like, what was that you were singing to me last night?”

Erik freezes, hands still on the glass of water he set down on the nightstand. “You heard that?”

“Sort of?” Peter scrunches his forehead. “I mean, I was half asleep at the time, but I’m pretty sure I heard you singing. Unless that was a dream?”

He could lie. The song was a lapse in judgment. Peter is twenty-seven years old. Listening to Erik sing a lullaby would be hilarious to him. He wouldn’t understand the significance behind it. He wouldn’t care.

But right now Peter has that look of fragile hope, the same kind he had on the roof. And Erik thinks _why not_? It belongs to Peter as much as it did to Nina.

“It’s the song my parents used to sing to me. And their parents before them.”

Peter’s eyebrows raise up. “Wow. That sure beats _Over the Rainbow._ That’s – that’s really wicked, actually.”

Wicked. The lullaby passed down in his family for ten generations is “wicked.” But Erik smiles, because in Peter-speak _wicked_ is high praise, as he understands it.

“Maybe you could teach it to me sometime?”

The smile drops in surprise. He hesitates. This lullaby is sacred. Erik is the only person left alive on this earth who knows the words. He knows that Nina would always appreciate the weight of such a song. He is still trying to figure Peter out.

“Perhaps,” he says, and Peter’s hopeful, curious gaze drops to his lap.

A long, painful moment of silence descends upon them. Erik struggles between rescinding his answer for one more positive and shrinking further away from any deepening connection before it’s too late.

“I’m going to the den to watch some TV and nobody can stop me,” Peter says and in the next instant the bed is empty and a breeze has tugged Erik’s hair.

 

 

If Erik and Peter were a Venn diagram, their circles would not intersect.  Erik thanks God every day for it. Peter has no temper. He has no rage, no tragedy. He is light where Erik is shadow.

Right now he is moaning piteously on the couch because his medicine has worn off and his headache has returned.

“I’m dying,” Peter croaks. “Dad, I’m dying. I’m not gonna make it. I’m going to the spirit in the sky.”

Erik rolls his eyes. There is a certain twisting in his gut, both thrilling and painful every time Peter calls him “dad.” It snags like a hook.

“You’re going to be fine. Dr. McCoy is getting your painkillers.”

Peter grips his forearm. The boy never fears touch. “I need you to write my will. I’m bequeathing all my records to Kurt, but you get the Walkman. You need to continue your music education after I’m gone. I don’t want you to live in a world without Rush.”

Erik hates that Walkman and almost every noise that leaks out of those headphones. But he can’t help the smile that crosses his face because he knows by now how important it is to Peter. He bows his head solemnly.

“That is quite an honor. For now I will get you a glass of water.”

“I’m sick of water. Can I have a coke? And, like, five Twinkies?”

Peter’s eyes look like Nina’s when she wants an extra cookie after dinner. Erik had never been able to refuse her, sneaking her a snickerdoodle when he tucked her into bed, after Magda had kissed her goodnight.

“Water,” Erik repeats firmly and marches off to the kitchen.

Peter is not Nina.

Peter is not Nina.

Peter is not Nina.

And yet Erik takes two steps from the kitchen, and then backtracks to grab a Twinkie from the pantry (only one though).

The grin that Peter gives him twists that hook even deeper.

 

 

He checks on Peter several times during the second day, even though the boy does not lack for visitors. In fact, Erik doesn’t need to check on Peter when Kurt is willing to teleport into town for more Hostess processed trash when they run out of Twinkies and Jean dissipates his headache with fingers that slowly massage his scalp.

(Peter is definitely milking this for all its worth and Erik is strangely proud of him).

But the boy’s eyes light up whenever Erik walks into the room so he continues to find excuses to talk to Peter until well past midnight, when all the interesting programming has left the television and the students have gone for bed.

The fever has slowly receded throughout the course of the day and Peter forehead feels only slightly warm against Erik’s questioning palm. His headache has not returned, thanks to Jean, so he and Peter set up a game of backgammon.

Erik is usually a man of few words (except around Charles) but Peter is more than capable of filling a silence with little to no help from the other party.

Tonight he is deceptively quiet. Erik might blame the illness if he hadn’t seen Peter so animated today. The frown lines on Peter’s forehead worry him, as does the lack of gloating when Peter kicks his pieces out.

And when Peter does finally break the silence, Erik’s instincts are correct.

“What was my sister like?”

At first Erik’s mind blanks in confusion. He doesn’t know any of Peter’s family, why would he ask –

Nina.

Erik has never thought of her in that context before. He takes his time before answering.

“She was quiet. Loved animals, but painfully shy with people. She used to call herself the Princess of the Forest and her best friend was a deer.”

It hurts, oh God does it hurt, but in a clean way that takes Erik by surprise. He musters a smile, even though it feels cracked and jagged.

“So . . . nothing like me,” says Peter flatly, with none of his humor.

Erik thinks about this for a moment. “I wouldn’t say that. You both have an uncontrollable sweet tooth. I used to sneak Nina cookies before bed, even though Magda swore she would get cavities. You both love puns. And music. We didn’t have a radio, but she used to make up her own songs and sing them for me.”

The more he thinks, the more similarities he sees: their joy at simple things, their boundless enthusiasm for the things they are interested in, their reckless behaviors (Nina once climbed nearly fifty feet up a tree to rescue a stray cat).

How did he not notice it before?

“She sounds adorable,” Peter says, still so quiet and serious. “You must really miss her. I’m sorry.”

He closes his eyes against the sting of tears, but not before one escapes. To miss Nina is such a vast understatement. A part of him died with her and Magda and it will never come back. It’s a hole, a bottomless well of grief, and some days he manages to skirt around it and other days he falls in without any hope of escape.

“This was a mistake.”

Erik’s eyes snap open. Peter bites his lip and fidgets with the dice and doesn’t look at him.

“I should have never told you. I’m sorry.”

“Why do you say that?” Erik asks, his voice like gravel.

“I’ve had ten years to get used to the idea that you’re my dad,” Peter says, eyes still glued to the die in his hand. “You’ve only had a couple of months. It’s not fair to ask you to be my dad so soon after you lost Nina. It must feel like I’m trying to replace her.”

How does Peter know this? How does Peter know this when Charles had to read it from his mind?

“I’m not, by the way. I just thought . . . Anyway, I know you think you owe me all these favors, but you don’t have to stay for my sake.” Peter looks up and his eyes are so _kind_ and the knife just twists further in. “If you want to leave, you should go. It’s okay. Actually . . .” he bites his lip. “You don’t really have anywhere to go, so I should leave. It’s cool. I’ll, like, move back in with Mom and maybe get a real job or even go to college and you can send me a Hanukkah card or something.”

Throughout this speech, Peter’s voice has become increasingly tight and he blinks too often and by the time he’s finished he is biting his lip almost to the point of blood. He will show no weakness to Erik. (Perhaps their circles intersect after all).

It would hurt less if Peter had stabbed him with a kitchen knife.

 

 

Charles took one look into his mind and embraced everything about Erik, all his darkness and his light. Erik believed Charles only capable of such a thing because of his telepathy.

But Peter does not have telepathy.

This relationship is optional. Peter could have kept them both in the dark. Instead, he gifts Erik with this love and acceptance that Erik certainly does not deserve.

Granted, Peter has not seen as much as Charles. But he’s seen enough. He took his time in deciding, and he chose Erik, even though such a decision is insane and witless and could possibly get him killed one day.

And what could he get in return? Erik’s love? Erik’s love is a curse. Nothing good ever happens to anyone on whom he has inflicted it. It’s already broken Peter’s leg. Peter deserves better than whatever inevitable suffering Erik will rain down upon him.

The last few days, Erik has struggled with his decision to stay or go. But now, knowing he has the full understanding and permission to abandon his son, the choice could not be clearer.

They will have to take him by force from any of his children. And if that makes Erik a selfish man, then so be it.

 

 

He stands up from his chair and moves to sit beside Peter on the couch. In one fluid movement, without care or embarrassment, he hooks am arm across Peter’s shoulder and hauls the boy against his chest. Almost instantly his son relaxes against him. ( _Such trust. Where does he get such trust_?).

“I am not going anywhere,” he says against Peter’s hair. “And neither are you. Being your father is not a burden or a repayment. It’s a privilege, one that I am honored to have.” He takes in a shuddering breath. “You’re right. Sometimes it is painful for me. But in the end I believe it’s worth it.”

 _I just pray the universe does not punish you for it_.

Something wet lands against Erik’s collarbone.

“Peter?”

“I’m _not_ crying,” Peter snaps, but he sniffles and the collar of Erik’s shirt slowly gets damp.

It’s ridiculous, they are both grown men, but Erik rubs small circles on Peter’s back and hums the lullaby just as if Peter were five and suffering from a terrible nightmare because right now that’s the only way Erik knows how to comfort his children.

After several minutes Peter takes deep, even breaths and gathers his composure. He pulls away from Erik, face red from crying and he puts too much focus on fixing his hair than eye contact.

“Wow. That was um . . . embarrassing. Sorry for going all, like, preteen girl on you. That’s not usually my style. I didn’t really expect . . . that.”

Erik cocks his head to the side. “You thought I was going to abandon you?” He doesn’t mention how seriously he considered that option himself.

Peter looks at him with a surprising amount of defiance. “I don’t want you around me if it’s just going to hurt you.”

“My wife and child were murdered. It’s going to hurt whether I’m around you or not.”

“Yeah, but I make it worse.”

After Peter’s confession on the roof, he had adopted Erik as his father with instant and boundless enthusiasm. And perhaps it had been too much at first, but Erik quickly adjusted. Now that same boy is arguing against the very relationship he had waited ten years to start, just for the sake of Erik’s feelings. Despite the doubts that had plagued him just the night before, the harder Peter argues for his departure, the more Erik wants to keep him here. At the end of the day, Peter soothes more than he provokes.

“No, you don’t,” he tells Peter firmly. “You make everything . . . lighter.”

Peter ducks his head, a bashful smile playing on his lips.

“I’m glad you found me. But I have to wonder what drove you to look for me, when everything you knew was . . . negative? The first thing I ever told you was that I killed the president.”

His son shrugs. “Curiosity, I guess? At first. I just wanted to talk to you, see what you were really like.”

The answer disappoints Erik, to his surprise. But Peter continues.

“And when you disappeared, I thought I had missed my chance forever and _that_ made me realize how much I wanted to tell you. Then you were on the news and I knew I had to find you, no matter what, even if you were a total nut job.”

Erik raises an eyebrow at this, but can’t find it in him to be offended. “I tried to end the world and you still wanted to talk to me?”

Peter sighs, scratches the back of his head. “This is going to sound pathetic but . . . I just really wanted a dad for a long, long time. And at that point I wasn’t going to be picky about who it was, so long as they, you know, thought I was cool. Besides, I watched you for a while. There’s more to you than – ”

_Pain and anger_

“—a bag full of crazy.”

“I think you’re very cool,” says Erik, this particular use of the word awkward on his tongue.

“That’s because I am. I’m the coolest.” Peter deadpans, but he and Erik exchange smiles.

“I’m sorry to say, I might disappoint you,” says Erik after a moment, his smile fading.

It’s not a possibility so much as an absolute certainty. But Peter just gives him that Devil-May-Care shrug.

“Nah. You do alright.” He gestures at the Backgammon board. “Wanna go back to getting your ass kicked?”

“I was letting you win. Like a good father.”

“Look, there’s no need to lie just because you’re insecure at the fact that your son is better than you at everything.”

 

 

When Erik teaches his son the lullaby, Peter insists on learning the original Yiddish words, rather than the English translation. The syllables come out mangled by his accent and Peter won’t win any singing contests in the future, but the song still sounds as beautiful as he remembers. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> There will probably be more in this series because their relationship fascinates me so much! This is the first time I have written about Peter from Erik's point of view, but it won't be the last.


End file.
